Don’t assume she wants to hear, what she wants to hear. Maybe the best answer to ‘Does this dress make me look fat?’ Is, “You are gorgeous but that dress doesn’t show you off, try something else”

Don’t assume anything. You are probably wrong. Ask pointed questions.

Don’t leave out details. Being honest is more than just telling the truth be it ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Tell her the whole truth when she asks you something.

Don’t wait to be asked. When discussing the future, goals, intentions, tell her what you really want out of life. Don’t agree with her when she talks about kids or houses just because they sound like nice things that you may eventually want at some point. If those are things you can’t see yourself doing for a long time, tell her.

Communicate. Don’t let her find out what you were up to last night from a friend or through social networking. Be upfront, the less you hide things, even things you know may hurt her, the more of a honest person you become. It hurts less, coming from you.

If you really hate doing something, tell her. Don’t let her think you love visiting her grandmother on Sunday afternoons, if you really can’t stand it.

Remove your profile from all online dating sites. No exceptions.

Don’t let her fall in love with the version of you that you think she would love. Be honest and if she is going to fall for you, let it be the real you.

Tell her what you are afraid of.

Tell her your dreams.

Do not carry on emotional affairs. Faithfulness is more than just not sleeping around.  In conversations with other women, think about ‘would i be having this conversation if my girlfriend was here.’ ‘would i be ashamed or embarrassed if she overheard this conversation.’ Don’t use other women as an outlet for your relationship frustrations. It’s normal and healthy to get frustrated with your partner at times. Deal with those maturely and ethically. If you are feeling down, don’t flirt with another girl in order to make yourself feel better. Deal with your problems head on and in healthy ways. Emotional affairs are just as bad as physical ones. Don’t cheat on your relationship; you do it to yourself every bit as much as you do it to her.

Don’t avoid confrontation or conflict. Don’t smooth things over. Be a man, and deal with conflict with honesty and with love.

If you screwed up, and failed to do any of the above, come clean right away. If you are not used to living this way, create new open and honest habits, it gets easier with practise.

Those lessons are ones that broke my heart to learn the hard way once, and would rather not have to experience again. People lie. People tell you what you want to hear. People meld and change themselves into who they feel you would like more then their actual self. I don’t want to move on so much, that I forget that, nor do I want to forget the pain that comes when you don’t pay attention to the still small voice in your head that whispers ‘he’s lying.’

Maybe remembering these things will help me in my next relationship. Maybe remembering these things will help me avoid my next heart break. Maybe carrying parts of your old relationships with you can prevent you from making the same well intentioned mistake twice. And maybe if you remember these things they will stop you from jumping into the arms of the next person who says ‘You’re beautiful.’ So i guess, its a balance, between moving forward, yet not forgetting where you’ve been. I guess if I can master this, I won’t be asking ‘is it too soon?’

Maybe its not about beginning a new relationship, maybe it just is that need to feel wanted, desired, liked even. So can you jump into dating someone new after a week? How would that affect your ex? Would that cause further hurt? Maybe that’s part of the allure. Maybe it would just be nice to be able to rub it in his face that you were able to find someone new, so fast. Maybe its a race.  Or should you wait, out of respect, honour the time that you spent together and grieve the end of the life that was you and him/her.

Cry, yell, mourn, play the same Sarah McLachlan song over and over a thousand times, so that when the man of your dreams walks in, that man who holds every quality that your ex didn’t. Who has none of the annoying habits your ex did, and who makes you feel alive for the first time, since, well, your ex did, you are ready for him!

Let’s play this out. Ok two people, dating and very much in love. One person wants to live in the city and one always dreamed of settling in the country. There are a few ways compromising could sustain this relationship…. for the time being, anyway. The city girl could look at how much her boyfriend loves the outdoors, comes alive and really relaxes when he gets outside the city limits. So, out of love, she compromises. They move and she is miserable for the next few years until she finally realizes that she gave up too much of herself, starts looking up profiles of business execs on online dating sites, and leaves him. Ok that doesn’t sound good.

Option two. Country boy is devoted and selfless, and desires nothing more than to spend his life with this wonderful girl he has found. So he moves into her high rise apartment and gets his own electric keyless entry thingy. He wants to marry her but he moves in and waits a bit to see how their new lives, living together will affect things. She is blissfully happy moving up in her career, has girls’ night out martini parties and figures life doesn’t get better. He becomes more and more depressed in his concrete jungle and continues to put off buying an engagement ring. Resentment begins to build and instead of proposing, packs his things in a fit and walks out the door, one day while she is at work. Terrible.

Option three, they agree neither would be happy living in one another’s ideal spots, so both compromise, he trades in his pickup and she gives up her metro pass, they buy an SUV, live in a townhouse in the suburbs and day dream about nice neighbourhood parties and backyard gardens. Unfortunately, they both soon realize this is the worst option of all, both compromised and both are miserable.  He has an affair with a stay at home mom next door, she loses touch with her friends. They mutually agree to spilt, mutually hurt.

The moral? Compromising may be a short term solution, but is often a situation where nobody wins.

This article will not be about hope. I will not tell you to dust yourself off and move on, or just get over it. It’s not about revenge or retribution. This article pays homage to the feeling of perpetual remembrance and pain that follows a long-term relationship gone bad. We often see movies in which someone was hurt in a relationship and they set out to find new love, or seek revenge or just generally un-do their entire life’s course due to the aftershock of the break-up. What you don’t often hear of is what happens years down the road, when the dust has settled and new relationships have been formed. No one ever discusses what happens to your mental state when your ex-love randomly shows up in a dream, or you see them in a restaurant or bar with their new flame, or a family member dies and they show up to pay respects. No one ever discusses the aftershocks of a big relationship. In sad truth you’re never truly done mourning the loss of a long-term relationship with a person you truly loved. You might move on and date again or marry, you might find that you always know yourself to be much better off without that person, and you might never have to live with the notion that you were at fault. But every now and then, here and there, you will find yourself thinking about them. They will creep into your thoughts, your memories and even your personality for years to come if not forever, because so much time with a person can engrain them into your very being, no matter how good or bad they were for you. No matter how brave you try to be.